Yay, I just saw that it was released on GOG as well! Awesome! I'll be sure to make an LP of it when I can. Really looking forward to the final product with the branches and whatnot, which I intentionally avoided along with the most recent beta-versions.

Put in my (positive) review on Steam, I'll probably be playing it more over the next couple days and add more to the TV tropes page, since I expect more people will be looking for it, what with let'splayers and gaming magazines giving it exposure and all.

There have been a few negative reviews on steam and in the comments on the Steam boards... :-/ We also got a 6.5 on Rely on Horror, which was a bummer. Given the success of games like Gone Home and Journey, I would have thought people would be more understanding of short focused game about giving an experience than entertaining them with game mechanics.

Then again, I'm sure both of those games have their detractors as well. Perhaps that's a measure of success in its own way... :-/

Oh man Gone Home was incredibly divisive among the online community at large, especially on the Steam reviews. All Steam reviews are to be taken with a heap of salt (unless it's the one I wrote of course, because I'm objectively right ), but I seem to remember there was a bit of an uproar about Gone Home (too short, not a "game", etc etc, ugh)

It's probably not very easy to do, but I'd say take the negative reviews as a good sign. Whatever their stated reasons for disliking it are, the game is engaging people enough to have strong feelings about it one way or another. If it got no negative reviews I would consider that weirder.

Honestly I have seen that there are a fair amount of negative reviews of Steam. Most of them seem to focus on the same points; the game's too expensive for the length and the gameplay itself is too boring.

The too expensive for the length thing I can somewhat understand, as it is personal preference really. The too boring complaint is something that I can see the logic behind as well. I mean there isn't a huge amount of variety to the gameplay and I can imagine that it could grow tedious for some people, I just would have hoped that the brutally oppressive atmosphere and tense horror would make up for it but sadly that isn't the case for some people :/

I mean I can forgive the game for being simple because it does the atmosphere and horror so well, which is the most important part of the game in my eyes. It just sucks to see that there's a good number of reviews that feel this way

On the plus side however, the people who seem to like the game really do like the game
I'm seeing a lot of people praise it for being something different in the genre which is exactly what I would have hoped to see. So at least the people who like the game do view it as something great, which helps counterbalance some of the negative feedback hahaa. I guess it may turn out to be one of those decisive games that you either love or hate, but I guess we'll see in time!

It is a little bit irksome because the simple gameplay was a deliberate design decision, and in my opinion, increases the immersion. Do people accuse The Walking Dead by Telltale of being simple? Maybe, but I think the game would be worse if they added a bunch of "game-y" systems.

I understand that some people feel it's too short, but I think it's a trade off between atmosphere and game-y systems, and we made the right one. The combat mechanics in Silent Hill 2 are terrible and prevented Joe from playing more than half an hour even though I yelled at him that he was obligated as an Infinitap employee to play. Would the game be better without them? I'd argue yes, but maybe people want to navigate through menus and reload things...

The real question is what does this mean for the next game? I don't know. I don't know if game-y systems really fit in to the game I want to make, but maybe I shouldn't give up on it too soon. Or maybe I shouldn't do design by committee. *grumble* Maybe I'm just having a bad day...

I wouldn't add anything, but there's always room to nudge and tweak things around. Perhaps if there were more objects to fiddle with and more scripted events? I know the vision and development of the game shifted quite a bit since the demo, but there aren't very many other instances involving having to do something or solve something that's barring your progress after that. I'm not saying to put puzzles in it or make it more challenging, but the harsher criticisms seem to be centered around "nothing" happening, which means (the way I'm interpreting it anyways) that they're looking for some sort of sense of accomplishment other than progressing the story. Perhaps if there were more instances of picking stuff up, using held items, or adding a thing or two for them to read, there might be more of a sense of them accomplishing something?

Now I say that, but again, it's important that you like what you make and not sacrifice the pot to satisfy the other cooks. For all I know you could have been intentionally moving away from that design style over development. But, it's something to keep in mind.